haggling, an appartment, and a mountain trek

Another internet cafe, another keyboard, and another set of limitations on the punctuation I can use!

It's another gorgeous day in Xela, and it has been one of more new experiences. This morning we went, with our Spanish teachers to the market at San Francisco El Alto. It was completely unlike any other market I have ever seen. First of all, it wasn't just a market place, but a whole town (incidentally, the highest in Guatemala at 2600m). Imagine every single street of a town crammed with market stalls, people sitting on the pavements outside their homes selling everything you could possibly imagine, from enormous rolls to fleecy fabric, to kitchen scourers, pigs, chickens (alive or dead), scissors, belts, fabulous fabrics, and carcases of creatures I have never seen before in my life.

There was a man with a microphone and 2 'things' on a table in front of him. An interested/horrified crowd gathered around as he extolled the virtues of these creatures, and all the foods that could be created from them. They were dead (thankfully - I think), and looked like some prehistoric creature that might have been dragged up from the bottom of Loch Ness. Honestly! It had like a sort of beaky face, with wings/fins, and covered in a dark brown leathery skin. It was about 2 ft in length. Clearly no-one had seen one before. God only knows where this bloke had got them from. T wondered if they were some creature previously unknown to science.

Possibly we have just witnessed the last 2 specimens, and now they are extinct.

I also had my first try at haggling. This is such an alien thing to me, I felt like I was pulling at my cultural leash and really doing something utterly wrong. My guidebook tells me that the first price the vendor asks for is 2 or 3 times what they expect to get for it. But when this initial price seems really cheap anyway, haggling seems utterly immoral. Yet at the same time, you don't want to feel like a ridiculously rich foreigner splashing their money everywhere, so you are forced to give it a go.

I had my eye on a really beautiful piece of fabric in the traditional style, and asked her how much it was. 40 Quetzales (about 3 pounds fifty), I pretended to be thoughtful, and offered her 15. Her reply was swift, 30 'es muy bonita' (I know, I know!!!), then I offer 20, and she sticks at 30. I stick at 20, and we go on like this for a bit. I'm a bit confused. Does she really want 30? Am I insulting her with my offer of 20 quetzales. Eventually, I cave in and offer 25, which she accepts readily. Hmmm. I'm sure that an experienced haggler would tell me that the point that you get stuck is the point at which you walk away, and that's when she accepts your offer. Oh well. Despite it feeling odd and wrong, I did feel a rush of excitement after having completed my purchase, even though I'm sure she got a better deal than me.

T and I have found somewhere else to live! Well, at least I hope so. We handed over a Q200 deposit this morning to a guy with a long ponytail and a big grin. It's a room at one of the other spanish schools, and we have a kitchen to use (hooooray!), bathroom, lounge, and courtyard. There are 4 other rented rooms there, which will meet my need to be living near other people. Plus it's a language school, so there will be people milling around there in the day. We will move in (i.e. pack our few posessions back into the small backpacks we brought with us, and walk over there and empty them onto the bed) on the 27th Nov. This feels quite exciting, like we are beginning to get established. The rent is 60 quid a month for both of us, which we can't complain about. The houses in Guatemala are really cool. From outside they look very small, falling down, peeling paint, many of them with second storeys yet to be completed. You open the front door (often like a big metal set of garage doors) and walk into a hall area. From here you walk out into a courtyard. The rest of the house is laid out around the courtyard. Many of the houses here are shared by travellers, so you have a kind of motel effect, each person having their own room that faces on one side onto the street, and the other into the courtyard. It's really lovely. The courtyard is really sunny a lovely in the day, and is where everyone washes and dries their clothes. A nice, communal feel. Our new home is just off the central square in Xela, and close to our favourite cafes.

This weekend, we are hoping to go on one of the Quetzaltrekkers treks - climbing the highest mountain in Central America - 4200m. If there is a space for us, we will leave at 4.30 tomorrow morning, and return on Sunday afternoon. I'm slightly concerned about hypothermia camping at 4000m, and my sleeping bag is rubbish, but there, I'll have to see. Maybe I'll just sit up next to the campfire all night.